


They Say Home Is Where The Heart is Set In Stone

by gnimaerd



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Comfort, F/F, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-19
Updated: 2013-05-19
Packaged: 2017-12-12 08:16:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/809354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnimaerd/pseuds/gnimaerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short-ish Vastra-centric epilogue for the finale, as the Patternoster gang help Clara recover from events at Trenzalore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Say Home Is Where The Heart is Set In Stone

**Author's Note:**

> Note: the title of this song is taken from the chorus of the Gabrielle Aplin song Home, which I listened to on repeat all through writing this - it is SO Clara, Vastra, Jenny and River’s song, I highly recommend a listen whilst you read

When all is said and done, there is very little that cannot be repaired with good, strong tea – even though Jenny’s hands shake when she serves it, and Vastra has to reach and steady her wrist to stop her burning herself.

They’re all a bit shaky, really – the Doctor is shivering uncontrollably in the drawing room, sat so close to the fire that there’s sweat running down his brow, and Clara is in his lap, stroking his hair with fingers that twitch and tremble.

Jenny and Vastra have left them alone; out of a general respect for their privacy, and a desire for their own. They have retreated to the kitchen, to Jenny’s tea things and lemon fancies and Vastra’s fresh pig’s liver and the good china and all the solidly domestic comforts of home. Vastra sits on the little wooden chair Jenny normally occupies in the mornings when she’s eating breakfast and reading papers, and Jenny sets the tea things on the table, and they both tremble, quietly.

Strax is patrolling the house, the clunk of his boots on the floors above their heads for once more a reassurance than an irritant.

“Are you seriously telling me that I’ve died twice in one night?” Jenny asks, when she has put down the tea pot and taken a deep breath, “bloody hell.”

“Well, technically, my dear, you died once… and then you died eight years ago and were erased from all of space and time after that point .”

“That’s not very comforting.” Jenny looks exhausted at the very thought, and Vastra wishes she hadn’t elaborated.

“What matters is that you’re perfectly fine now,” she points out, putting an arm around her waist and pulling her close, looking up into her pale, drawn face. “And I shan’t be letting you out of my sight at all for the foreseeable future.”

Jenny smiles, the expression worn but real as the morning sun creeping through the kitchen window. She’s warm, blessedly warm – perhaps Vastra had only imagined it in her panic, but her poor little corpse had already felt cooler when she’d had laid hands upon it, her blood stilling, her pulse fled. It is a memory that immediately makes Vastra shudder.

“What’s wrong?” Jenny has wrapped her arms around Vastra’s shoulders, so that the Silurian’s temple rests just beneath Jenny’s breasts – it’s an odd position, one of them sitting and one standing, but it’s allowing Vastra to hear Jenny’s heart beating , so she has absolutely no wish to move.

“Nothing, my dear,” she promises and knows perfectly well that Jenny can tell her words for a lie, because Jenny kisses the top of her head and calls her a silly old lizard, then climbs into her lap and presses her soft little face to Vastra’s neck. She has let her hair down, so that it’s getting everywhere, and Vastra has to push it back to see the curve of her wife’s jaw and stroke where the blood pulses, hot and vital, just beneath the skin.

“I’ve no idea what I would have done with myself if I’d lost you,” she murmurs, almost too quietly to be heard – outside the newspapers are being delivered; a horse and cart trots past, London awakening.

“You’d have been _fine_ …” Jenny insists, stroking the scales at Vastra’s throat and watching the muscles beneath contract as the Silurian swallows.

“No, no I would not have been.”

Jenny is quiet for a moment, and Vastra listens to her breathe, cherishing every exhalation.

“Well, I’m perfectly alright now, aren’t I? Like you said.”

“You are indeed.”

Jenny sits up, puts her hands on either side of Vastra’s jaw and kisses her, very gently. “I’m just perfectly fine.”

“Just perfect, as it happens.” Vastra adds, and when Jenny smiles this time it’s brighter, stronger – she has stopped trembling.

They drink their tea in companionable silence, Jenny remaining draped against Vastra’s shoulder as she does so, comfortable as cat, virtually purring. Vastra kisses her between sips, full of quiet affection, touching her nose and her jaw, all that soft, pale, vulnerable flesh, brilliantly warm.

“Hadn’t you best retire to the conservatory?” Jenny asks, presently, “you’ll get cold in here if we don’t put the stove on…”

“I was thinking that – bed, might be the more appealing option,” Vastra replies, quite truthfully – and not only because she’s sleepy.

Jenny’s smile has the spark of something other than drowsiness in it as well – nothing quite like far too close an encounter with death to stimulate a thirst for the well of one of life’s greatest pleasures.

“We do have guests though, don’t we, ma’am?” She points out, “I suppose we can’t exactly leave them unattended… I mean unless we’re to entrust Clara and the Doctor to Strax’s tender mercies.”

“He _is_ a nurse.”

“A nurse armed with grenades.”

“True.”

They can still hear Strax, doing something that sounds suspiciously like boarding up the second floor windows (again).

“I’ll check on them,” Jenny suggests, getting up, a little stiffly – and Vastra immediately misses her warmth and realises that Jenny’s right, she really should move to the conservatory soon; the shock and exhaustion as much as the cool kitchen air is likely lowering her body temperature at an alarming rate.

She stands as well, clearing the tea things, as Jenny conscientiously props the kitchen door open, so that Vastra can see her all the way across the hall as she goes to tap on the drawing room door.

Vastra watches her peek inside, then withdraw, just as quietly, and pull the door shut.

“Kissing,” she announces, as she re-enters the kitchen, in a tone that rather suggests she was not expecting to find them doing anything else.

“Oh dear,” Vastra sighs, putting the tea things in the sink.

“I think they’re rather sweet.”

“I just have a terrible feeling it will all end in tears. We saw what happened the last time the Doctor lost someone,” Vastra shakes her head, glancing at the drawing room door.

“She’s making it better for him, though,” Jenny points out, reasonably. “Besides, if, perhaps, I had died today, would it have made you regret ever loving me?”

“Of course not.”

“Well then – whether it all ends in tears or not, they can have a bit of a snog if they want, can’t they?” Jenny shrugs, then gently takes Vastra’s arm, “reckon they’ve earned it. Speaking of which, my dear, I believe you mentioned something about us retiring to bed?”

So they abandon their guests (who do not much appear to mind being abandoned) and take to bed, Vastra ripping the neckline of Jenny’s dress in her haste to strip it from her, making Jenny gasp and laugh for the first time in what feels like days. They get the sheets in a tangle and Jenny has to pause to pin her hair back again because it’s a little ridiculous how much it gets in the way, and they are both almost numb with exhaustion but it feels good to touch one another, where they are bruised and sore and raw and warm and familiar.

“I love you,” Vastra whispers, somewhere in the middle of it all, “very, very much, you know.”

“I know, dear.”

A bit later, Strax interrupts them. “Cease your disgusting fornications – the Doctor is destroying the kitchen!”

The Doctor is in fact only trying to make breakfast, with Clara shouting instructions at him from the table, where she has been relegated because she’s still shaking and has already smashed two plates in her attempts to help.

It’s a bit worrying, actually, that it’s six hours since they left Trenzalore and she’s still trembling.

“Excess time energy,” the Doctor says, as he burns scrambled eggs, “she’s just lived nearly a thousand years in half a second and at least a hundred different bodies – you’d take a little while to clear that out of your system too.”

Jenny takes the eggs off him and throws them out, starts again.

“She needs protein,” the Doctor says.

“Pancakes,” Clara announces, “I want pancakes, with butter and – ooh, maple syrup. I love maple syrup.”

The Doctor has to be persuaded not to immediately jump in the TARDIS and fetch her some – Vastra does not think it wise he attempt any travelling whilst still so exhausted and jittery himself. They make do with a little watered down honey and melted butter and Clara wolfs down six pancakes then asks for more.

“One thousand years, one hundred lives, half a second,” the Doctor repeats, “lots of energy to absorb – best keep feeding her.”

“Any steak?” Clara asks.

This is Madame Vastra’s house – if there is one thing they are never low on, it’s raw meat.

Clara spends almost a day eating. They feed her practically everything in the pantry, a gallon or so of tea, several pints of milk, all the eggs within a half mile radius. She claims to have a craving for macaroni cheese, whatever that is, and this time they really can’t stop the Doctor getting in the TARDIS to fetch her some and she’s so grateful when he gets back that she kisses him and he blushes as if he’s never kissed anyone before.

She wants jelly babies, chips, celery, jammy dodgers, fish fingers and custard. As she eats she talks, recounts impossible things she cannot know – she hums a tune she has stuck in her head and Vastra watches the Doctor’s eyes grow wide with wonder, because it is a Gallifreyan love song and it has not touched the lips of a single living being since before the Time War. She asks about an art gallery in Paris, she wants to know what UNIT is and who was Rose and where is Torchwood and she remembers a girl called Susan and a Time Lady named – Sarah Jane? No – Astra – No – Fred – no Romana –  and she saw River Song as an infant in the arms of a Roman Centurian –

She babbles endlessly, regurgitating the Doctor’s life, a thousand years of it in more detail than even the Doctor himself can articulate. She was there at one of his weddings but she’s not sure which; she remembers the way the stars looked in Gallifrey’s night sky when he was born; she remembers the gate of his walk when he stole the TARDIS away. Her mind all but bulges with worlds and lives and life times she was never built to hold, yet somehow, within her frail, mortal form, she contains it all, processes, externalises, mouthful by mouthful.

She eats three bowls of porridge carefully prepared by Strax and then, at last, stops, putting down her spoon.

“Time to go home,” she decides, firmly. “To…”

She stops. She isn’t sure, lost amongst the myriad threads of her own existence.

“You are welcome to stay here a while,” Vastra offers, “both of you – rest, recuperate.”

The Doctor watches Clara carefully, waiting for her response.

“I…” Clara looks at him, still lost. So the Doctor nods.

“We’ll stay, for a bit. Not too long. Just until Clara’s had a good long nap. That’ll help.”

He has to carry her up the stairs to bed, as she hums the Gallifreyan love song, still, and insists that she could walk if he let her (patently untrue – she couldn’t even stand up after all that food).

They stay for three days, two of which Clara sleeps through – the Doctor absolutely refuses to leave her side and has to have all of his meals brought to him by a hugely resentful Strax. When she wakes she proceeds, once again, to eat the entire content of their pantry, although this time she’s more alert and less talkative. The Doctor hovers around her, offers to bring her jelly babies or fish fingers, but she shakes her head.

“Don’t be silly, Doctor – I hate fish fingers.”

She can no longer remember the love song, although the Doctor promises to teach it to her again.

They leave, although not before Clara makes them a soufflé to say thank you. Patternoster Row seems rather empty without them, as does all of London, in fact. It has been a pleasant, quiet few days, in which Vastra has spent the spare minutes counting Jenny’s heartbeats and listening to the notes of a Gallifreyan love song drifting through the house.

“Have you ever considered… retirement, my dear?” She asks Jenny, late on the night following the Doctor and Clara’s departure. They are in bed, Jenny tucked up warmly against her, her skin delightfully hot to the touch.

“Retirement? Whatever for?”

“Safety. Peace.”

“You’d get bored and start eating people, you know you would.”

“I would not.”

“You would.” Jenny’s smile is impish as she strokes one of the boney ridges along the back of Vastra’s head. “I don’t mean it unkindly, dearest, but you’ve never struck me as the type to take to an easy life fishing on the Isle of Man.”

Vastra has to concede the point. Every holiday they’ve ever taken as culminated in them foiling some crime or other, or otherwise getting into trouble. Realistically, ‘retirement’ is unlikely to end up looking much different to the current state of affairs.

“It really has rattled you, hasn’t it? This business in Trenzalore?” Jenny’s voice is gentler. “You mustn’t worry so much, Vastra.”

“You can instruct me as much as you like on that topic, my dear, but I’ll make absolutely no promises.” Vastra sighs, “I tasted only a moment of your loss – it was far, far too much.”

“Poor old reptile,” Jenny murmurs, kissing the tip of her nose.

But they are interrupted by Strax, hammering on their door (he has at least learned to knock) to announce the arrival of a puny and disgusting human from Scotland Yard getting mud all over the hall carpet and something about another puny and disgusting human having been kidnapped and can they please get up and do something about it?

Such is the rhythm of their lives, for which Vastra is grateful (best to avoid time to think, really). Normality begs resumption, and there has been a spate of kidnappings that Scotland Yard is begging her help in solving, and Jenny is her normal, buoyant self, and Vastra knows they cannot pause to treasure their luck too long (too likely that it will run out). They are at home once more, they are together, still, and that will have to content her for now.


End file.
